Presenter Bio

Ken Nelson

Ken Nelson has been researching the history and process of the daguerreotype since 1973. He has been a practicing daguerreotypist since 1976 (emphasis on the word practicing... always practicing in search of perfection.) His daguerreotype work is in public and private collections from Germany westward to Japan. He has written and lectured extensively on all aspects of the daguerreotype, and has taught the process at many venues from the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii to the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, NY, where he taught the workings of the daguerreotype for five years as part of their Historic Process Workshops. Most recently he has joined the workshop staff at the Center for Alternative Photography in New York City, teaching the classic daguerreotype process.

The Tin Gypsy, Meghann Gilligan

The Tin Gypsy is a traveling photographic darkroom and laboratory built out of a 1961 vintage travel trailer. Photographer Meghann Gilligan rehabilitated the trailer and retrofitted the Gypsy as a mobile darkroom, specially designed for the practice of antique photographic techniques, focusing on the making of tintypes using the wet plate collodion process (c. 1850). This project takes its inspiration from the historical origins of photography and its earliest practitioners, who were equal parts mad scientist, adventurer and artist. These early photographers built darkrooms onto horse-drawn buggies and traveled the country, taking the wet plate process out of the studio and into the field and making tintype photographs of the folks in the small towns and cities they traveled through along the way. The goal of the Tin Gypsy Project is to reinvent the traveling tintype photo laboratory for a new era.

Tod Gangler

Tod Gangler of Art & Soul studio of Seattle specializes in a rare color printing process known as the Pigment Transfer or Color Carbon print. Known for its beauty and permanence, the carbon print is the ancestor of other elite print making processes including Carbro and Dye Transfer printing. Art & Soul also specializes in the digital imaging techniques of scanning, image editing, and color management. The studio is known for artistic excellence, and works on fine art projects for artists and museums. Producing prints in a rare and beautiful 19th century process, using the modern tools of the digital age, Art & Soul is dedicated to producing great work that combines all that is best of the last and next centuries.

Nicolette Bromberg

Nicolette Bromberg has worked with visual collections for about 30 years. She is currently the Visual Materials Curator for the University of Washington Libraries Special Collections. Previously she was the Visual Materials Curator at the Wisconsin Historical Society and before that she was the Photo-Archivist for the University of Kansas Library, Kansas Collection. She has taught courses on management of photograph and film collections, visual literacy, and on Understanding Photographs as Historic Documents. She is the author of four books, Wisconsin Revisited; Then and Now: The Wisconsin Sesquicentennial Rephotography Project; Picturing the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition: The Photographs of Frank H. Nowell ; and Shadows of a Fleeting World: Pictorial Photography and the Seattle Camera Club

Dan Williams

Dan Williams has been active in photography for nearly 50 years. His interest in alt-processes began with seeing some of Robert Demachy's Gum Bichromate prints in an exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum in the late 1960's. He was fascinated by the prints that were unlike any he had seen. Over the next few years he taught himself the process. Eventually he taught others through the University of Washington Experimental College. Having become enthralled with the handmade look of alt-processes, Dan went on to learn many others. Given the opportunity to participate in this symposium has given him reason to relearn the process that introduced him to "Alt" in the first place.

David Pitcher

David Pitcher has always been fascinated with the historical photographic processes of the early 19th century and has a deep passion for modern technology. These interests have now collided together and are allowing him to leverage modern 21st century digital imaging techniques and fusing it together with the 19th century processes and photographic systems. Over the past two years David has been working on developing an alternative to the traditional usage of gelatin and chemical hardening agents used for sizing and subbing substrates. Much of this research has been focused on finding an easy to use coating solution that can be applied to non porous surfaces as glass, metal, and plastics to expand the possibilities of usable substrates for alternative photographic processes.

Print Trade & Display

Optional Alt-Photo Print Trade

If you would like to participate in the optional print trade, bring a matted print made to these specifications and turn it in during Registration:

Original print made using Alternative Photography printing process (please note the process used on the back of the print or under-mat)

Matted, maximum dimensions 16x20

Wrapped in plain paper

We will use a ticket process (you will receive a ticket upon check-in) to randomly assign prints amongst those participating in the print trade.

Event Details & Registration

This symposium is geared to the beginner and the advanced photographer alike interested in learning and using alternative printing processes. These range from cyanotype to salt, VanDyke, platinum-palladium and many other processes some of which date back to the beginning of photography.